From PCC’s Classrooms to Pasadena’s Streets: A Panel on Life After Prison

The students who enroll in Pasadena City College’s CORE program come in carrying something most of their classmates don’t: a record that likely won’t be forgotten, even once the sentence is done.

Tonight, three of them — or people who did similar work — will take a seat at the front of the room.

Pasadenans Organizing for Progress, the Pasadena civic organization known as POP!, is hosting the latest installment of its “Let’s Talk Let’s Listen” community dialogue series on Wednesday evening at the Pasadena Community Job Center. “From Incarceration to Community Leadership” centers on what happens when formerly incarcerated individuals turn to education as a path forward — and what that path can look like when it works.

CORE, which stands for Community Overcoming Recidivism through Education, is Pasadena City College’s state-funded program for formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted students, and it as central to tonight’s conversation.

Three panelists are scheduled: Sara Rodriguez, identified in the event materials as a social worker; Robert Villanueva, described in the press release as a Global Freedom Scholar; and David Moore, who serves as community engagement director at Impact Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centers in Pasadena and as managing director of the Underground Trojans, a USC student organization supporting students with criminal justice involvement.

Moore is an alumnus of PCC’s CORE program and works in Pasadena’s reentry and recovery sector.

According to POP!, the conversation will center on how panelists’ work and education served as “a turning point and powerful tool for breaking cycles, reducing recidivism, and building stronger communities.”

The job of CORE, as Pasadena City College describes it, is to provide formerly incarcerated students with job skills, pathways to an associate’s degree or certificate, and the ability to transfer to a four-year institution. Nicholas Hatch, identified as a CORE faculty advisor in a 2023 LAist profile of the program, put the stakes plainly: “No student is more marginalized than the one who has been incarcerated. They have been shoved to the very furthest margins, to the point that society says, ‘We don’t even want you around us. We would rather lock you away and forget about you.'”

CORE received $113,636 from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office as part of a $5 million investment in 44 community colleges statewide to build programs for justice-impacted students.

Tonight’s event is co-sponsored, according to the press release, by ANARC, the Altadena Community Coalition, A Place Called Home, MY TRIBE RISE, the NAACP Pasadena Branch, NDLON, and the Pasadena Community Job Center. The Pasadena Community Job Center, itself a member of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, has served as a recurring venue for POP!’s community dialogues. Prior installments of the “Let’s Talk Let’s Listen” series addressed police presence in PUSD schools and Eaton Fire land acquisition.

The event is free and open to the public.  No rsvp is needed.